I’ve wanted to make this since before the pattern even appeared, and was relieved that someone else did all the calculations so all I had to do was buy it and print out half a tree worth of charts
Via Flickr:
Pattern: Celestarium from Twist Collective (www.twistcollective.com/collection/component/content/arti…), with slightly amended edging.
(Also bloggers’ block, I suppose!)
I’ve been working on Arietta for nearly a year, and have been stalled on it for only slightly less time. Every time I pick it up I make a mistake, or get confused, and stop again in favour of patterns which require less attention.
But because of getting confused about quantities and washableness of Koigu when planning a present for a brand-new baby, I had a 50g skein of sock yarn in rather fetching reds and pinks, and decided to make a mini-Arietta with it, in the hope of finally getting the pattern.
And I think, cautiously, that it’s worked. This is my mini-Arietta blocking:
It’s 48″ long and 14″ wide at the widest point, which is plenty big enough for a small shawl or a scarf, and it’s lovely. And now I’m working again on its red laceweight sibling…
This is Annis, pinned to the futon in my library, blocking. I added some more rows of plain stocking stitch with a row of eyelets just before the cast off edge (ribbon is threaded through them in the picture, although I haven’t decided yet if I’ll wear it with the ribbon or if it’s just a blocking aid). I went round the cast on edge afterwards with a teen tiny crochet hook (three single crochet to each cast on loop) and added beads to each point.
This is to wear for a friend’s wedding in a week and a bit, and I’ve been putting off finishing the edging before suddenly realising quite how soon it is!
Talking of things I’ve been putting off… the sheer weight of unblogged projects has been hanging over me and harshing my blog mojo, but I got fed up with it 
I might blog the unblogged stuff; I might not. For now, I’ll just do a list of things I’m currently working on:
Oh, and I knit yet another pair of baby Coriolis for the imminent arrival of T’s baby, but despite finishing them ages ago, I have not yet posted them, and the baby was due a couple of days ago. Note to self: post socks.
This is Ella blocking, all flat! I’ve worn her a couple of times, and she’s nice and warm, and I’m pleased I paid attention to alternating the more- and less-variegated skeins in knitting her.
This is the Zauberball I mentioned in my last post, in the process of becoming the dragon’s breath scarf (so named because this is an adaptation of the flickering flames pattern, and red). I’m a lot further on now than in this picture – I just haven’t taken any photos for ages.
I’ve finally finished both Lucas’s Tomten and the red cardigan, both of which were waiting for fastenings, and I’d failed to find the green toggles and reddish-purple ribbon, respectively, I wanted, so in the end I plied some yarn (orange for tomten and the silk mix edging yarn for the red cardigan) against itself twice to make cord ties. The double plying means the cord is stable, and it’s four times thicker than the working yarn, which is a good thickness.
I’ve now got three knitting projects on the go, and they’re all actually in progress: yesterday I worked on all three of them, depending on how much my eyes were free to look at them:
The news in brief:
This is what Ella looks like at the moment (photo taken without flash to better capture the texture):
It’s crazily three-dimensional, with squarish bobbles that pop up or down, and I keep having to stretch it out to reassure myself that it will probably block flat:
I’m only a few rows away from the point where the back splits into the two fronts, which is good going, especially since I’ve been knitting most of this in the same timeframe as Wisteria.
This is the current state of the Ella:
It’s lots of fun to knit, I’ve got the pattern memorised, and it’s progressing quickly. However, today was cold and rainy, and I was not dressed warmly enough, so I spent the day shivering and fantasising about getting home and putting on a warm snuggly jumper. The only problem is that I don’t own such a jumper. Enter Wisteria…
The slightly fuzzy nature of the yarn means the camera doesn’t focus where the eye does, so these cables are actually visible in the flesh. I’m a bit worried the collar is too wide, but I expect the cables (crosses on every round!) will pull it in more as it goes along, so I’m not panicking yet. And it’s beautiful, and the yarn is lovely and soft, and I’m smitten.
I spent this weekend with Frax and J, dyeing lots and lots of yarn, knitting (and spinning for me), and watching a hefty chunk of Battlestar Galactica.
This is what I came home with:
That’s overdyed yak yarn (previously salmon pink, cream and grey) at the front, a whole load of previously-undyed Cumbrian wool yarn at the middle and the back (it’s semi-solid rather than solid, but more consistent in colour in real life than it looks in the photo), and some handspun undyed grey wool in the middle-back (this is going to be Wisteria). It feels as if I suddenly have lots of new yarn, and I’ve even started knitting the violet wool:
There’s a lot more of it now than when I took the photo, but this is Ella from Knitty, and it’s working out rather nicely
I have knit all of my spinning oddments into a decent-sized (ie its ‘wingspan’ is a bit longer than mine) triangular shawl, and then crocheted an edging onto it, and added crochet ties. It’s the craziest garment ever, a hotch-potch of colours and textures, and I doubt I’ll ever wear it outside the house, but I love it anyway, and am enjoying identifying all the little bits of handspun yarn.
I’ve also made some purchases, one within the rules of the self-inflicted yarn and fibre diet, and one breaking them. The permitted purchase is a bunch of nice-but-cheap superwash wool yarn in three different colours, which will be a Tomten hoodie for the baby my oldest friend is currently working on. Depending how much yarn is left after that, there will be a matching hat, and possibly even mittens to go with (in which case I’ll come up with some way of attaching the mittens to the jacket). Yes, I know a hooded jacket doesn’t need a matching hat, but I’m having the urge to knit the baby jester hat.
It’s a permitted purchase because I don’t have any superwash in stash apart from sock yarn, and baby gifts need to be washable! Plus it comes from the gift budget, rather than the yarn one (or would if I planned my budgets that precisely
The not-permitted purchase is 1kg of undyed grey wool fibre, with a couple of discounts applied, which worked out to be really quite cheap. I’m toying with the idea of spinning a jumpers-worth, and then following someone else’s patten, in the hope of actually achieving a jumper that I like. And the pattern might be the beautiful Wisteria (noooo, not influenced by sockpr0n at all, why do you ask? I can’t resist a bit of a mod, though – I think I’ll leave off the cables around the hem, because I suspect they look best on people much thinner than I am.
Depending on what kind of grey it is when it arrives, I might dye some or all of this, possibly carding the dyed with the undyed for a heathered yarn. Of course, thinking about all this has reminded me that I haven’t finished carding the black alpaca and purple merino blend, and have spun only a very little of it, so now I’m thinking about that again, as well, and trying to decide once and for all what it will be, and therefore how to spin the rest of it.
This in turn reminds me of the red leaf wrap, still sitting mostly-unwoven on the loom, and calling to me every time I go into the library and see it sitting there. I have a crafting date this weekend, so I’ll probably take the loom or the wheel with me and weave or spin while the others knit.
Talking of spinning: the weekend just gone, I met my first real in-the-wild spinner (Sadie and B don’t count, since I pimped the spinning shiny at them), and I’m deeply envious of her since her father owns a sheep farm and is the neighbourhood shearer, so she gets her pick of fibre!
Finally, a new project! This is another baby hat, two coloured intarsia in the round, and intended to have zig-zaggy stripes and cat ears (for which I might need to ask around for a little bit of pink sock yarn, since I don’t have any, and I think ears look cuter with pink inside – anyone have any spare?). The zig-zagging, shown in closeup in the photo, means the join between colours moves one stitch each row, which is helping with the holes intarsia would otherwise risk.
So on the whole I’m tentatively declaring the mojo returned, which is a relief
